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Microfiche also greatly democratised pre-digital genealogical research, as it allowed massive amounts of family history data, birth and death notices in newspap
by flashman 10y ago
Microfiche also greatly democratised pre-digital genealogical research, as it allowed massive amounts of family history data, birth and death notices in newspapers, and so on, to be copied and distributed around the world.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- benbreen 10y agoAs an historian, I still use it all the time for consulting 17th and 18th century records. There are still large amounts of historical manuscripts that exist on microfiche but are not yet digitized. Looping the film into the machines can be a pain, but I'll miss it when they truly fade into obsolescence. There's something fun about being in a dark room in a library whirring through thousands of pages of ancient manuscripts with an analog machine.
- flashman 10y agoIn my experience, it's been the source of some serendipitous discoveries. On microfilm or microfiche, you might catch a glimpse of something really interesting on the nearby pages, which sends you down a completely different track. Just like when you go to a library for one book, then discover two or three really relevant ones on the adjacent shelves. You don't always get that same experience from some machine learning 'Related Books' algorithm.